People have the power! I was thrilled to take part in this historic win for orcas last night:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-seaworld-orcas-20151008-story.html The California Coastal Commission did right by orcas in requiring, as a condition of approval for the Blue World Project, that SeaWorld stop breeding them, which will ultimately end captivity for long-suffering orcas in California. SeaWorld has admitted that it intended to breed even more orcas to fill the new tanks, but the commission's action today ensures that no more orcas will be condemned to a non-life of loneliness, deprivation, and misery. SeaWorld is a sea circus, and the orcas are its abused elephants. PETA wants SeaWorld to stop building tanks and start emptying the ones they've got by sending the orcas to coastal sanctuaries, where they'd finally have some semblance of a natural life.

Hi, I’m Pamela Anderson. As a resident of California..(who grew up on Vancouver Island.- surrounded by natural wildlife like orcas, bald eagles in the habitats they thrive in and breed naturally..) I often look out at the beautiful ocean and wish the whales confined at SeaWorld had freedom as nature intended. SeaWorld’s proposed expansion is out of step with the times. L.A. has banned bullhooks used to beat elephants. San Francisco banned animal circuses altogether. And last month a judge upheld the government’s ruling barring a marine park from importing beluga whales from Russia, an issue I spoke about at a Russian forum, just before the ruling. Approving a permit for new awful orca tanks would be a major step back. Look closely at SeaWorld’s plan. It is designed to enhance the tourist experience—not the animals’ existence. SeaWorld says it would use the extra space to breed and imprison more orcas. Approving this project will mean immense suffering for the ocean’s most sophisticated animals. The construction alone will be very distressing to SeaWorld’s captive orcas. Only one of the existing tanks is being replaced, so the orcas will remain in the others and be subjected to constant loud machinery. For marine mammals who communicate through sonar vibrations, this is torture. SeaWorld’s own records reveal that construction stresses the whales out. SeaWorld is clinging desperately to the past, before people understood these intelligent animals. But we now know that captive orcas go insane - and suffer terrible depression - when they are separated from their babies- and their families. If SeaWorld truly cared about animals, they would move the orcas to much more affordable sea sanctuaries where they live some semblance of a normal life, feel the ocean currents, perhaps even communicate with their pods, even if they may never be releasedAs a resident of California, I urge you to please vote against SeaWorld’s Blue World project.